In Renaissance politics religion was civil society, the hegemonic apparatus of the ruling group.

Evidence

Guicciardini’s assertion that two things are absolutely necessary for the life of a State: arms and religion. Guicciardini’s formula can be translated by various other, less drastic formulae: force and consent; coercion and persuasion; State and Church; political society and civil society; politics and morality (Croce’s ethical political history); law and freedom; order and self-discipline; or (with an implicit judgement of somewhat libertarian flavour) violence and fraud. In any case, in the political conception of the Renaissance, religion was consent and the Church was civil society, the hegemonic apparatus of the ruling group. For the latter did not have its own apparatus, i.e. did not have its own cultural and intellectual organisation, but regarded the universal ecclesiastical organisation as being that. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2187

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s key move: equating Renaissance religion/Church with civil society and the ruling group’s hegemonic apparatus — a foundational definitional step for the hegemony framework.
• XREF: Directly builds the civil society / political society distinction that later Islamophobia readings of Gramsci’s hegemony will depend on. — connects to: Renaissance individualism briefly allowed women to wield military and political power.